Disclaimer: I don't own them and I don't make any money off of them.
Warnings: Male/Male sex, graphic, language, violence.
Lyrics by Celine Dion,song:I'm Alive
Tin Soldier Series
Sequel to Knowing You
Can It Be?
When you call on me
When I hear you breathe
I get wings to fly
I feel that I'm alive.
When you look at me
I can touch the sky.
I know that I'm alive.
The music came from the radio of the car that I had taken from the motor pool. Well, it WAS official business, wasn't it, sanctioned by Quatre Winner? Why the hell not? It was a sleek black car and it maneuvered in and out of traffic with ease so I had time to listen to that song and the words... Ever hear a song that just summed up everything you had kept locked deep down inside, that pulled it out and laid it bare in the sun, and made you look at it? Well, this was the one that did it to me. I found myself rubbing at my eyes. They kept burning and I kept swallowing hard, trying not to... Shit! I was going to be a basket case before I ever reached Heero. I flipped off the radio and stared at the traffic, feeling that I was making one big mistake going after the man myself.
When I was finally standing in front of Heero's door, I wasn't much better. It was almost a relief to knock and not get an answer... almost, and then I began to really worry. Shooting a look around, I felt pretty sure that no one was watching me. After examining the door, I smirked. Stupid lock. I lifted the door by shoving up on the knob, and then shoved sideways. The old jam jiggled and then the bolt slid out of a worn down groove. The door opened and I shook my head, wondering why Heero hadn't changed the locks to something more secure. I guess that we were both beginning to forget our soldier paranoia.
The furniture had the same tropical motif as mine and, like mine, had probably come with the place. I couldn't imagine Heero willingly picking out pastel decor. I found the bed rumpled and saw that there was food sitting out on a coffee table, uneaten. Next to the plate of food, I saw a sheaf of photos and clippings. All of them had photos of me on them from after the war. What the...?!
I checked Heero's messages. There were two from Quatre and one from some other organization wanting info sent to them. When I found Heero's car keys on the kitchen counter, as if he had flung them there, I really started to worry. I have to admit right here that I suddenly thought some pretty dark stuff. I found myself looking nervously for suicide notes or plans to get rid of me permanently. I was glad when I didn't find any.
There was also nothing to show me where Heero might have gone. I decided, then, to leave a note and begin a search of the surrounding area. I mulled over what to say and then scribbled, 'Quatre wanted to know why you hadn't come into work, so he sent me to check on you. Call my number when you get back in.' It sounded impersonal enough and didn't reveal any of my inner turmoil. It wasn't until I was halfway back to my place, that I realized that I had asked Heero to call me, not headquarters or Quatre. Damn! That's all he needed, to feel that I was now stalking him! I almost considered going back for the note and then mentally kicked myself. It was too late and I was really getting myself too worked up about the whole situation.
I decided on some casual clothes. I wasn't about to search for Heero in the tropical heat wearing my office duds. I pulled into my place and changed into some cut off jean shorts, a tank top, and some sandals. I then decided to start my search by checking all of the little tiki hut bars that lined the beach.
I headed out, glad that it was early. There weren't very many people on the beach and most of them were catching some morning waves with their surfboards. The bars were always open, selling mostly alcohol, but also things that could marginally pass as breakfast food. There were already some stool warmers in position having morning bloody marys and orange juice screwdrivers, their warped sense of logic leading them to believe that those type of drinks were better for them.
Did I really expect Heero to be knocking back a few? No, not really. It was more likely that he had left his car keys because someone had picked him up and taken him somewhere. Still, a good agent searches every nook and cranny and I wasn't about to start fishing far afield before I had checked all of the places close by Heero's home. Walking the distance between my place and his would ensure that I covered a lot of possibilities, however slim.
"Hey, you little fuck!" A voice shouted behind me.
I turned and saw Mr. Adonis striding towards me. He was wet, his hair slicked back, and he had a surfboard under his arm. He let it drop to the sand as he advanced on me.
"You don't have Bad Ass with you this time!" he continued. "We got some unfinished business."
"Really?" I sighed in irritation. "If by 'unfinished business' you mean the fact that I didn't get to kick your ass from here to the moon the first time, I guess you're right."
"Like you could," he sneered. "I outweigh you. Come along nice and I won't make it too hard on you."
"You really think you have a chance, don't you?" I wondered in amazement.
He was just too damned arrogant to take my warnings to heart. When my fists plowed into him and I whirled around and landed a kick into his balls, he went down, writhing and crying on the sand. I looked towards the nearest tiki bar, the bartender watching us with wide eyes.
"Call security and have him arrested," I told the man. "My name is Agent Duo Maxwell. I'll press charges for attempted rape later."
The man nodded shakily and began to punch buttons on a vid phone. I looked down at surfer boy and then tisked. He wasn't going anywhere for awhile. "Don't even think about running," I told him, just to be certain, "because I can find you."
I turned then, brushing my hands together because I felt that touching him had made them dirty, and started to continue on down the beach. I stopped abruptly. Heero was standing not a few paces from me in his black suit, barefoot, and face unreadable.
"It seems that you were very capable of handling him yourself," Heero said in a very stiff, reserved voice. "Very professional."
"Uh, thanks," I managed to reply, though I'm not sure how. I was pretty much stunned.
"You're not at work," he said.
"Neither are you," I replied, and then it was a staring game. I finally ended it by telling him, "Quatre sent me to look for you."
Heero suddenly looked like a damned wild animal ready to bolt. He had this god awful look of, 'I screwed up', 'I'm worthless', 'I hate myself', and 'I'm embarrassed', all rolled into one. The last thing that I wanted was for him to run again.
"It's my fault," I blurted out. "I shouldn't have said all that stuff to you yesterday. Calm down an let's talk about it, okay? You can even punch me if you want to."
That seemed to act like a 'slap across the face of a hysterical man' for Heero. He started and then took a deep, steadying breath. He shoved hands into his pockets, glanced at the confused man at the tiki bar who was watching us, and then stepped around Adonis and began walking down the beach. I had the feeling that he wanted me to follow and I scrambled after him.
I fell into step beside Heero. Even barefoot, he had a military stride, but my legs were long and I kept up easily. I glanced sideways at him, wondering if he was going to say anything. I stifled the urge to rattle off at the mouth in my nervousness.
"I'm sorry," Heero said at last.
"Yeah?" Brilliant, Maxwell! I mentally kicked myself and added, "I guess it was a big shock to you. It's not like I let you know way back when we were in the war. You were expecting me to say... I dunno... that I respected you, or something, and then I go and tell you something like that..."
Okay, ball back in his court. I was sweating and it wasn't from the sun and the walk. Heero's jaw was very tight, his dark, blue eyes staring hard at the sand in front of his feet. Maybe he was opting to hit me. I wondered if I had any defense against a man who could bend steel with his hands.
"I'm not used to being surprised," Heero said. "I never expected... I didn't know how to react... what to think. I am a trained soldier. I thought it was best that I go immediately and evaluate the situation before-"
"Before you caved in my head?" I interjected helpfully. I felt suddenly angry. "You're gay too, Heero. The thought of a guy saying what I did to another guy can't be that terrible to you, can it? Or is it just because it came from me, that you can't handle it? I thought you idolized me... or at least my way of dealing with life, so... what's the big deal, huh? Why don't you just say, 'Not in a million years, Maxwell', and we'll forget about it?"
"That easily?" Heero wondered and I sensed a land mine.
"Uh, well, for you," I told him honestly. "Not for me. I get my heart broken and I have to try and...."
"Get over it?" Heero supplied and again I sensed another land mine.
I decided to be truthful. I let out a gusting breath and said, "No, I don't think I can get over it, Heero, and that's why I gave Quatre my resignation. I'll go back to the Preventer's and you can train the men yourself."
"We wouldn't be able to work together anyway, if we were a couple," Heero said.
"No, I guess not," I replied as I rubbed the sweat from my forehead. " 'Course, we could have worked different shifts and made sure that we didn't command the men at the same time on assignments."
Heero nodded and then asked, "How long have you known?"
I looked at him and couldn't sense any more land mines. The question was what it was. "Since the moment I saw you, Heero."
I winced, ready to duck a rock hard fist. Heero did tense, and that's why I thought a swing was coming my way, but he didn't throw one, instead, he said, "Me, too."
I stopped walking and so did he. Hands sunk into his pockets, Heero was hunched and even more tense, waiting... for rejection?
"You dumbass!" I growled and he turned his head to look over his shoulder at me. "Why didn't you... Why did you... How could you let me think...," I couldn't get out a coherent sentence because my mind had turned into gel, overloaded with confusion, shock, and something huge that I was trying not to release until I knew for sure, knew without a doubt that there wasn't a misunderstanding. "What do you mean, 'You, too?'"
"I didn't think that someone like you could ever... love me," Heero replied. "I never hoped, even though I couldn't stop wanting to be with you since the first moment that I saw you. You were bright, funny, and beautiful and everyone liked you. I was a killer, a soldier to the core, and I never thought that I would ever be any different. I didn't have anything to offer you then. I wasn't a person anyone could love." He turned completely and faced me. "When you told me yesterday, that you loved me... I thought you were joking. I was so upset... and then shocked and confused when I realized that you weren't joking. When you are suddenly handed something that you wanted more than anything in the world, and it was something that you thought that you would ever get, it can be..."
"Traumatizing," I finished, in a daze. It was exactly how I was feeling right then. If the Earth had dropped out from under my feet, or the sun gone supernova, I don't think I would have been any more stunned, any more shell shocked than to find out that the person that I loved, the person that I had never thought in a million years I could have, loved me back.
"Have I ruined things?" Heero asked cautiously. "You called me an asshole..."
"'Cuz you let me twist in the breeze all this time, wanting you, loving you, while I thought you hated me!" I retorted, but there wasn't any anger in what I was saying. I think there was hurt, but that was going away to be replaced by... "What now?" I asked.
"We should talk," Heero suggested.
"My place?" I offered.
"Why not mine?" Heero replied.
I nodded to where my bungalow was peeking out from behind the palm trees. "Because you've been walking towards it all this time."
Heero looked embarrassed, uncertain.
"Come on!" I told him and dared to hook an arm through his as I pulled him up the beach. He let me guide him meekly and it felt damned good touching him, feeling the huge wall that had been between us just disappear as if it had never been there.
I saw Romie coming from his bungalow. He arched an eyebrow at me and I shook my head emphatically. He winked and went on his way as I lead Heero into my home and never actually shut the door. It swung on its hinges as Heero suddenly grabbed hold of me and showered me with kisses.
"Heero?" I said around his warm lips.
"Is it all right?" he asked breathlessly and I looked into his eyes and damn, if I didn't see exactly what Quatre had been talking about. It wasn't just lust there. Heero wasn't groping me and wanting a quickie. What I saw was love that was so strong that it was like a tidal wave crashing in to me, making my knees weak and my heart hammer in my chest. It was true! Heero Yuy really loved me! That love was overwhelming him. Now that he knew that I loved him too, he couldn't hold back the emotions that he had kept caged all of those long years.... and I suddenly couldn't either.
My hands were all over him, smoothing over every inch of Heero that I had wanted to touch for so long. I pushed him back into a chair and he sat down as I crawled into his lap and grinned, my hands busy loosening his tie. His big hands gripped my ass as if it were the Holy Grail and he pulled me against him, face full of wonder and awe at what was happening. We both suddenly froze like that, staring into each other's eyes, both of us knowing that our lives had just changed drastically and that we were about to fulfill every dream that we had ever had about each other.
"Love you," I said and my voice was hoarse, so full of emotion that I could barely control it. "I'm doing this because I love you." I didn't want him to ever doubt that, to think that he was another Filmore. He knew what I was saying.
"Filmore is a liar," Heero breathed almost in my ear and his warm breath tickled me. "Once I discovered that, I had Sally Po transfer him to Antarctica station for a year of duty. She agreed with my suggestion whole heartedly. Please, don't ever bring his name into our lives again. He nearly destroyed us."
'Us'. It made me shiver when Heero said that. You might think we were moving kind of fast, but, hell, it had been freakin' years! We weren't kids! We knew what we wanted! We now knew how we felt about each other. We had lost a lot of time. We didn't intend to waste any more.
I kissed him deep, delved my tongue past his lips, and gave Heero the best kiss I knew how. He fell into it as if he were going to faint. I felt his rock hard erection spring up beneath me. My own was pressed up against his belly. Slipping a hand between us, he felt it and then moaned as if he were going to lose his mind. I captured that moan with my mouth and moaned back when he roughly massaged me.
Before I knew it, Heero had picked me up. I straddled his waist and his erection as he kicked the door closed and then carried me to the bed. My back hit the mattress and he landed on top of me. Was he experienced? Would he be careful? Would there be pain? Those questions didn't even enter my head. All I could think was that I wanted him now... and maybe there was some fear that I had to take it while I could get it. There was still a part of me that was chalking everything up to a very good dream.
My hand hit the side table as I groped for it. Heero had inched me fully onto the bed, rolling me this way and that as his hands and lips did an erotic dance all over me. I fumbled inside of a drawer and found lube and condoms. There was a temptation not to reveal them, a fear that Heero would think that I had been entertaining other people, but, when I decided that my health and comfort was pretty damned important if we were going to have a relationship, I pulled them out. Heero didn't seem to have any thoughts on the matter at all as I freed his erection from his pants, prepared him, and gave him a wild hand job at the same time. It was long enough to make him cry out and short enough not to let him come.
God, he was so-
"You are so beautiful!" Heero breathed as we hastily began to undress.
"Handsome," I corrected in mock indignation as I lifted my legs up.
He kissed each knee and said, "No, beautiful."
I made a face. He rolled me onto my shoulder blades, curling me underneath him as he bent to kiss me on the lips. My expression turned from indignant to passionate as I nuzzled his neck and smelled his cologne. His skin was like silk and his muscles rippled against me as he maneuvered into position. I was in Heaven, Nirvana, the Pleasure Dome, in his arms; the arms that I had longed to be in more than anything in the world.
"Duo?" He looked deep into my eyes, the sun washing over us both from the open window. "I... I've always wanted this, wished for it, but... I don't want you to think..."
I smoothed a hand along his cheek and smiled. "Say it."
I could see the emotion gathering up within Heero like a volcano about to explode. When he uttered the words, "I love you. I want this because I love you.", they were full of that emotion, making them so powerful that I shuddered in reaction and felt as if they had burned their way straight into my heart. He meant them. He wasn't handing me a line. He wasn't a Filmore ready to happen again. Heero really did love me.
The words of that song, that I had heard in my car, came back to me, and as I said, "I love you too.", and Heero slowly pushed his erection into me, unable to wait any longer, those words carried me up to a new level of feeling that I had never reached before. Heero's tenderness, his gentleness as he moved above me, and the song weaving through my mind, made it, not just hurried, hot sex, but a confirmation, a revelation, a realization that though we had waited years to reach this point, this moment didn't contain any regrets. It was a beginning, one I knew that neither of us would ever forget.
"When you call on me, when I hear you breathe, I get wings to fly," I whispered to Heero as sensations crashed through me, pleasure emanating from the point where we were joined and had become one. It didn't seem stupid to say it and I didn't feel any embarrassment as he looked down at me in astonishment wrapped up in his love and passion.
"When you look at me, I can touch the sky, I know that I'm alive," Heero breathed back around a moan. He knew the song. I felt a thrill shock through me. It had said something to us both. It was us, having hidden away from each other for so long, not living, really, until this moment when we were at last complete. "I'll be the one, standing by through good and through trying times, "Heero said between a rain of hot kisses on my face.
I gave him a long, deep kiss in return, broke it, and said softly, "It's only just begun. I can't wait for the rest of my life."
Heero moaned as if those lyrics were a spur to his passion. His hips began to thrust in earnest and he bowed low and pressed his face against the pulse in my neck as he came. He shouted, convulsed, and, as his erection pulsed and twitched inside of me, I came too, letting out a tremendous shout as the world seemed to shatter as wave on wave of pleasure coursed through me.
We lay wrapped around each other afterwards, a salty breeze cooling the sweat on our bodies. Our clothes were half on and half off, my hair was a tangled mess escaping it's braid, and we were both grinning like idiots.
"We are so freakin' sappy!" I groaned, my ear pressed against Heero's still hammering heart. "I won't tell anyone, if you don't."
Heero chuckled. It rumbled against my check and his hand tried to smooth down the escaping tendrils of my hair. "I don't care what anyone thinks, love." He was trying that word 'love' out and I knew it was for the first time.
My heart swelled and I felt tears behind my eyes. Yeah, get me a dress and put nail polish on me now, I don't care either. Now I can see why they write those kinds of songs, and the poetry that I had always thought so damned awful, suddenly clicked and made perfect sense. Maybe I should write my own? "Ode to Shinigami and the Perfect Soldier," I whispered with a small laugh.
"Writing your own love song now?" Heero wondered, amused.
"Maybe," I replied jokingly.
"Leave it to others," Heero replied and pulled me down to hold me again. "What do two soldiers know about lyrics?"
I quirked a smile at him and hugged him tight. "You just have to know about love, Heero, and we soldiers know all about that, don't we?"
He kissed me and smiled, his heart in his eyes. "Yes, yes we do."
As I settled happily against him, I thought about how far we had been forced to come to get to this point, all the variables, all the seeming coincidences, and realized that there had been one driving force behind it all, Quatre Winner. Somehow, he had known that two lonely men had needed, not just new jobs and new lives, but the one thing that they had both been lacking and needing so desperately: each other.
"Quatre the matchmaker," I said thoughtfully.
"Yes," Heero replied with a gentle, fond smile, understanding. "We'll have to thank him."
My hands wandered over Heero, as I felt passion and love rise again, and I
said with a wicked smile, "Later, much later..."